MATH 1712: WEEK 2

Topics for this week are:

• Cartesian Plane; Lines
• Functions and Graphs of Functions

Objectives for this week:

• Graph lines and basic functions in the x-y plane
• Find the equation, slope, and intersection of lines
• Draw the graphs of piecewise defined functions
• Create new functions using the rules of function arithmetic
• Find the domain and range of a given function

Text coverage:     Sections 1.3 - 1.4, 2.1 - 2.3 of S. Tan.

Online resources:

• Week 2 Formula Sheet
• Week 2 Practice Problems
• Maple worksheets
  • Plotting Graphs: One of the primary uses of the computer will be to give visualization. This worksheet gives syntax for plotting graphs. The worksheet does not use the calculus. Rather, it is an introduction to techniques for plotting graphs with Maple.
  • Interpreting Graphs: The goal of this worksheet is to understand the graph of the following function: > h:=x->(x^3+3*x-5)/(x^2+2); Although you can just plot it in Maple, we want to do this systematically to get a better idea what to look for when looking at the graph. Read each question, and try to see if you could have guessed this by looking at the graph of the function.
• Java Projects
  • Plotting lines: This Java project(external link) can plot lines but it requires axes fixed at the center of the window and do not represent any values of x or y.
• Spreadsheet Applications
  • Plotting straight lines: A spreadsheet can be used to plot a graph of a straight line. Here is the HOW-TO documentation with examples.
  • Finding Intersection of lines: This spreadsheet gives the detail how to use spreadsheet to find the intersection of lines.

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Last Modified: . School of Mathematics, Georgia Institute of Technology.